


Eo Dolens

by jessicadamien



Category: Detective Chief Inspector George Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-04 18:03:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14598645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessicadamien/pseuds/jessicadamien
Summary: A man's descent into madness. Loosely based on the characters of Jonathan Ross' George Rogers crime mysteries.





	1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

 

I am going insane.

I can feel it. It’s very much a physical sensation, this downward spiral from reason toward the final episode, the last point where I’ll be able to think rationally. Beyond that is something I can only imagine, and what I imagine is too frightening to spend a lot of time analyzing. I do believe the closer I get to it, the easier it will be to delve into it. Perhaps by then I can even accept it.

But I haven’t reached that point yet. That I will, I have no doubt. But for now, every time I feel my breakdown nearing, I begin to tremble violently. My voice, though loud to my own ears, is barely a hoarse whisper. It feels as though I’m shouting, but in this nearly empty room, where even a hiccough echoes off the walls, I hear nothing reverberating back to me. Ergo, my screams are audible only inside my head. Feeling as if I’m losing my very identity, sometimes I simply sit in here and whisper my name to myself. David. I’m David Billings, thirty-four years old, patrician nose, narrow face, a touch over six feet tall, slight of build but sinewy of muscle, a fan of the late Beau Brummell, who is considered quite a fop, though I can get away with emulating him because I’m also a formidable judo expert. Until recently, I’ve been quite content with my life and where I saw it going. As I look around this tomb, which consists of four needing-paint walls, a creaking door, and a window I have to fight to open, I realize I don’t remember what contentment feels like.

One would think I could avoid all this turmoil if I merely avoided coming into this room. Did I tell you I could still think logically? Yet I find myself visiting this haunted space daily. I don’t know what I’m hoping for, but it’s the only room in the house where I feel I can relax enough to reveal my real face to the dust motes and the uncaring pigeons outside the dirty window.

I don’t know what my real face looks like. Far from the face I see in the mirror when I shave in the mornings, I expect. There, my face looks gaunt, my eyes strained and haunted. My hair is stringy, my lips dry and cracked. I can compare the face in my mirror to the photo taken of Donna and me only four months ago, and my eyes, once so brilliantly blue, are now grey. My hair was blonder then, and my barber had earned his tips. He is a magician, and I understand why Donna was always running her fingers through the length. It brushes my collar, and my boss is always trying to talk me into getting it cut into a more professional style. Screw him; he’s balding and in no position to offer suggestions.

Yes, I can remember when I took pride in my appearance. It seems so long ago.

Donna is in denial. I had read all the books, had listened to the armchair psychologists on afternoon talk shows explain how important it is to communicate with those closest to you. I tried to discuss with Donna what is wrong with me. I had never felt she understood, but when she began actually rolling her eyes when I started to speak, I gave up. One cannot force knowledge into an intelligence-resisting wall. Still, it hurts to know she’ll allow me to sink into the abyss and not lose any sleep over it.

At least she never comes into this room. Without my having to explain it to her, she seems to realize it’s sacred to me. The only furniture I have in here is an uncomfortable sofa, an end table, and an old milk crate I used to keep books in. Now there are a few odds and ends in the crate, but I don’t feel like going through them to see what I had ever thought was important enough to keep. There’s something so frightening about what’s in that crate that I don’t venture too near it. And I don’t sit on the sofa. I found it in my younger days, before Donna, at the curb. Someone down the street was throwing it away, and I think it came from that old museum, the one that displays the homes of historians. This sofa was similar to one I saw in their copy of the home of Reverend Samuel Parris. He’s the man who was probably one of the first adults of the witch-hunting gang in Massachusetts to start hurling accusations around.

It is an ugly sofa; I don’t know why I had wanted it in my flat all those years ago. I suppose it was either that or sit on the floor. I hadn’t been earning a lot of money back then. Now that I am, this sofa should be nothing more than an embarrassing reminder of how tough times were when I first began working for the police department. And if Samuel Parris had ever rested his arse on it, I could almost understand why he so zealously went after all those innocent people in Salem Village. Such a seat, apparently stuffed with cement, would most certainly result in piles, and anyone in that much pain can be expected to act out in such a hostile manner.

And here I am, once again sitting on the floor. I had lost too much weight recently to subject my tender backside to the rigors of rock. How would I explain the bruises to Donna? The end table has a cupboard in its base, and I find it much more entertaining to sit here and strive to remember what might be stored in it than to get up, open the door, and find out once and for all. I don’t get the sense it’s as frightening as what’s in the milk crate, but I’m not particularly motivated to investigate anyway.

That’s what I do, incidentally. I investigate.

I’m a Detective Chief Inspector in the Bedford Department of Police. I’m second-in-command for the running of the Criminal Investigations Division, and my boss, the balding, opinion-offering malcontent, has forced upon me a leave of absence. He is the only man I know who believes I really am losing my mind. Either that, or I’ve failed at hiding my ambitions of late. As his right hand, it’s natural for me to covet his corner office, his upholstered chair that doesn’t yet squeak, and all the perks that accompany any position of power in the police department. Perhaps he doesn’t believe I’m willing to wait until he retires, some twenty years into the future.

I am naturally more organized than he, and though I’m almost married--Donna and I have been living together for more than a year now--it’s common knowledge around the department that she will always take a back seat to my job. It’s more than Jason can say. Jason Thomas, that’s my superior. Detective Superintendent Jason Thomas, Head of CID. He’s a fair investigator, and hasn’t a political bone in his body. Still, since I’d realized how proud he is about his still-flat stomach and the possession of all his own teeth, even at the ripe old age of forty-two, I am unable to take him seriously.

I suppose I first began to suspect his motives when he asked me about Donna, about the relationship I had with her. This was before she had moved into my flat. He had just recently been cast out of his marriage to Bernice, just about the time he’d finally learned what the rest of us had already known--Bernice was a very friendly woman, and Jason was only one of many men she regularly entertained. I don’t want him eyeing up Donna. She is pure, and so far out of his league he shouldn’t have been able to clap eyes on her at all.

My cold shoulder toward Jason is subtle; his recognition of the same is more subtle still. It is an unspoken agreement between us that we will not discuss Donna. I had at first thought this was the reason he began changing the way he delegated responsibilities in the office. When once I would have been at his side, peeling back the layers of onion that make up unexplained death in our precinct, suddenly I was sent back to the office to file paperwork, ostensibly to placate our Assistant Chief Constable, who always insists on knowing every detail of our investigations, though never wanting to dirty his hands with them.

There is nothing I can do about this. As second-in-command, I am subject to Jason’s orders. I would sit in my office and stew, always tempted to withhold minor details of a case until I could impart them to Jason at my most opportune moment. That moment would be while we were sitting before our ACC, bringing him up-to-date on our caseload. I never followed through with this; the decent part of me that had joined the police force years ago still lived, and Jason, though growing to be such a thorn in my side, is a damned good Detective Superintendent, and worthy of my respect and loyalty.

But I began to suspect things. It started with the case we’d been working on about four homicides ago--the Barrington case. Daphne Barrington had been killed by strangulation, and at one point in the investigation, I became aware that the autopsy report contradicted what Jason and I had believed when first viewing the decedent. We’d thought it must have been something narrow and sharp that had been wrapped around her neck, cutting off her air supply. The autopsy report suggested something quite different--similar to a rope, but harder; something much larger in circumference than piano wire, which is what we’d first hypothesized.

I had gone to the vault, where evidence was stored until it was needed in court, but could find nothing there I remembered seeing at the scene of the crime. I distinctly remembered bagging a rough-hewn garrotte, or what could have been used for one, and we in this department have always been very careful of the chain-of-evidence. That garrotte should still have been in the vault, with all the other detritus of the crime scene. I remember feeling, at the time, that the earth swam briefly beneath my Italian loafers. Had I really found such a thing next to Miss Barrington’s body? Or had this been the early stages of the mental collapse I was enjoying right now? I could not, honestly and with conviction, suspect anyone in my department of tampering with evidence.

I had questioned Jason about it later that day, and though he was convincing at the time, I now think, in retrospect, that he was ill-at-ease about my questions. It was then he’d assigned me to a different case, some unrewarding case of identity theft that would better have been remanded over to the Fraud Squad.

Daphne. She must have been lovely in life; her violent death had caricatured her features horribly, as strangulation will do. But even through the protruded tongue, the bulging eyes, the discoloration of her skin, it was plain to see how beautiful she must have been minutes before her last breath.

I can’t sit here on this hard, wooden floor any longer. Donna will be home soon, anyway. She gets impatient with me when she knows I’ve blown most of the day in here. I lock the door to the room behind me, hiding the key in the heating vent at the end of the hallway.

Just in case I underestimate her curiosity.  
 


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

I don’t like Belgian waffles.

I enter the kitchen and sit down to the plate Donna sets before me, and, like an Alzheimer’s patient, I look at the waffles as if I’d never seen them before. I smile my thanks and take a healthy bite. It turns into sawdust in my mouth, and I wash it down with coffee, which I also hate.

Donna pretends to be surprised when I push away my plate and eye my coffee with distrust. I think she practices that expression in the mirror when I’m not looking. It’s a face she wears often these days, but I’m not in the mood to jump into her comedy this morning. I’m too tired.

I had the nightmare again last night.

I should have expected it. I have the same nightmare every time I’m forced to talk to telephone solicitors. I don’t like it that they have the control to engage me in conversation, trying to sell me things it would otherwise never have entered my mind to buy. It annoys me that no one seems to believe I don’t read magazines. Surely it’s not that unusual.

Donna’s no help. She’d been trying to hide a smirk as she reminded me that this was Britain; I could hang up the phone without legal repercussions and my soul would not rot in hell. I suspect it’s the challenge. I feel a perverse desire to win some sort of tacit victory over these wannabe salesmen, and so I go along with their sales pitches until I find something they _don’t_ say about their products. Then I move in for the kill, the avenging consumer advocate, the smallest part of my brain just knowing that if I can render them speechless, they’ll stop annoying people with their phone calls. It never works; they are so much more clever than I.

I don’t know what these calls have to do with my nightmares. Perhaps it’s the knowledge that if I were working instead of collecting pay for being ‘ill’, I wouldn’t be here to answer the phone. Because that’s what my recurring nightmares are all about. My desire to go back to work. I lately dream I’m in a pit, deep enough to know I shouldn’t even bother trying to climb out, but not so far down that I can’t see light above me. I’m up to my waist in what I hope is only water, and when I try to move around, my feet are stuck in muck. I refuse to think of this pit as a sewer, because even in my dreams, I’m much too fastidious to suffer such indignity with poise.

Jason is above, his shadow blocking part of the light. He’s shouting something to me, but I only hear garbled echoes of his words. I don’t feel reassured, and I don’t believe help is on the way. I’m on my own here, and though Jason is above me, I can only feel he’s come to gloat over my misfortune. Else why wouldn’t he be tossing down a rope?

I begin to feel about in the muck under the water, and my hands come into contact with something that causes me to pull away in alarm. I don’t want to know what’s down there. Jason is still calling down to me, and now I begin to make out his words. I choose to ignore them, because he’s not saying anything I want to hear. Does he really think I’m going to pull up what my hands felt down there? Jason’s words become clear at this point; he’s telling me I’m not fit to even file paperwork in his department, let alone head it. Because I realize then that he’s the one who’d dropped me into this pit, I begin to look more earnestly for escape.

That’s when I notice something off to my side. The pit is cylindrical, and there is no sun above, yet I know this hatch is on the east side of the pit. It opens much like a bank vault, and I move toward it to test the lock. I no sooner than get my hands on it when I wake up, bathed in a cold sweat and shivering as if with ague. Donna usually murmurs incoherently and rolls over to resume her sleep. I can’t even snuggle closer to her for comfort, because I’ll only feel guilty if she wakes up.

And then she feeds me Belgian waffles for breakfast. It must be a conspiracy.

“Will you go to the bank for me today?” Donna asks me, ignoring the rumbling of my unsatisfied stomach. “I won’t have the time, and if we don’t renew the standing orders, we’ll lose the telly and stereo.”

She wants me to leave the house?

“Of course.” I can fake sanity if I have to. I can live without the telly, but the stereo still offers me comfort. “Just make sure you leave the necessary paperwork on the table in the foyer.”

“You don’t need paperwork; just give them our names. And don’t let them talk you into an extension of terms. We should probably just pay it off entirely. I’m tired of dealing with the bank. They’re never open when I’m ready to do business.”

“It’s still an excellent way to build up a credit history,” I argue. I don’t know why. My credit has always been good, and Donna, when it comes right down to it, couldn’t care less what creditors would say about her.

“Suit yourself. Shall we go out for dinner tonight?”

“I was going to cook lasagna. Don’t you trust my cooking?”

She smiled. It was a sweet moment. I think she actually meant the smile; her eyes said so. “I love your cooking, David,” she said. “I just didn’t know you wanted to do that tonight.”

She stands up, smoothing down her dress and leaning to place her warm lips on mine. Before I can reach for her, to take more than what she’d offered, she is heading down the hallway to the side door. “I’ll see you after work, then.”

 

As the warm spray of the shower cascades down my back, I close my eyes and force myself to relax. It takes a conscious effort nowadays. With my eyes closed, my hearing and sense of smell seem to get stronger. I focus on the sound of water gurgling down the drain, and it takes a while for me to realize I’m smelling something that seems so familiar...

I open my eyes and try to pinpoint the memory. It’s lavender. It’s not a scent I associate with Donna, and it certainly wouldn’t be found among any of my bathroom articles. But before I can reason out where it came from, it’s gone.

Just a fleeting glimpse of what could have been a memory. Gone so quickly I can’t even decide if it was truly something from my past or if it’s the first symptom of a brain tumor. My shower is ruined now, and I shut off the water and towel off. After moving the comb through my hair, even I begin to think I had better visit my barber soon. As much as Jason lets me get away with, this would be too much for him to accept. He’s old school, and a trim, at least, is in order. I could go back to work at any time, and I should be prepared.

I had done a good job with my shave this morning; my hands, for a change, were steady and sure. I even felt brave enough to trim my mustache, and that’s saying something. Perhaps I’m closer to my return to normalcy than I gave myself credit for. I’m feeling so optimistic this morning that I mentally agree to any sort of mundane, brain-numbing chore Jason would graciously assign me, so happy am I at the thought of returning to work.

Inspecting the knot of my tie, I grin at myself in the bedroom mirror. Even my eyes are blue again, and I leave the room, heading down the hallway toward the front door. That’s the last thing I remember, until I open my eyes and find the ugly sofa in front of me, my neatly pressed trousers getting dirty from the dusty floor upon which I sit. The most obnoxious of the pigeons is pecking against the glass of the window.

I’m not wearing my watch; the window is so dirty I can’t look outside and get a good sense of the time. How long have I been in here? Had I even made it to the bank? And how do I find out without calling the loan officer and sounding like a moron? Do I wait until the claims officer comes to the door to repossess the telly and stereo?

I sulk in this room, wanting to put the blame on Donna. If she were more open to talking about my troublesome situation, I wouldn’t hesitate to keep her informed about things like this. If our positions were reversed, I’d look after her, wouldn’t I? It’s her own fault she won’t know until it’s too late to do anything about it that we’re losing the telly. I sit back against the peeling paint of the wall, enjoying my snit, until my stiffening joints force me to stand and leave the room. For no apparent reason, I remember the scent of lavender from this morning’s shower, and my eyes, inexplicably, dart to the end table. I don’t understand why I’m short of breath, but I somehow know not to question it as I lock the door behind me and return the key to its hiding place in the vent.

The first thing I do is look at the clock in the kitchen. It’s a quarter to six, and the bank will close in fifteen minutes. Even at warp speed, I couldn’t get there in less than forty minutes. I grab the phone directory, then dial a number. After a quiet voice picks up and gives me a five-minute spiel about how happy she is to serve me, I ask for the loan officer. After a few questions, he assures me that I had indeed renewed our standing orders, and, bless his heart, he doesn’t make me feel like an idiot. Donna need not learn of my missed hours.

But how could I have accomplished the trip to the bank? The necessary procedure to renew the orders? The trip back home again?

My optimism of this morning is gone, but I gamely open the refrigerator and warily eye the ground beef, the ricotta cheese. I’m sure I can at least begin cooking. By the time I, in my fugue state, might do something awful like add poison, Donna should be home to stop me.

I’m beginning to wonder if I can force a fugue on myself in Donna’s presence. It would prove to her that I’m not making this up. I have no desire to pull her down into my purgatory, much like a drowning victim would imperil the life of his rescuer, but the only thing more frightening about descending into madness is the certainty that one is truly alone while it’s happening.

Yet as I hear the sound of Donna’s car pulling into the drive, my smile comes automatically and falsely to my face. I take a deep breath and face her as she comes in the door, knowing it’s cowardice that causes me to hide my newest fear. If she didn’t want to hear about my theories regarding Jason and his preventing me from learning about the removed evidence from the Barrington case, I know she won’t want to sit still for my tale about missing hours.

She presses her body against mine as she kisses me, running her fingers through my hair. “Well done, David,” she says. “Does this mean you’re going back to work?”

“What do you mean?”

She steps back and tugs at my hair lightly. “You’ve been to the barber. I’m glad you’re keeping most of the length. It looks good on you.”

I smile my thanks and nuzzle her neck so she can’t see the anxiety that surely registers in my eyes. Another errand I’d managed while my mind was orbiting Jupiter? What else had I done while...away?

It’s all this idleness, I’m sure. I’m going back to work tomorrow. Even if it requires a heart-to-heart conversation with Jason, I’ll do it. We were once close friends; surely he wouldn’t turn his back on me in my time of need. I can no longer just sit and wait for darkness to descend over me. There’s a reason my conscious mind is trying to escape, and if I can’t trust Jason, I’m for it.

Donna winks at me and walks out of my embrace. I watch her as she leaves the kitchen, wondering if it’s my imagination or if she really is discouraging my advances. I can’t remember the last time we made love.

I’ve never felt so lonely.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

I wake up at my usual ungodly hour this morning. With few exceptions, my mental alarm clock kicks in at six o’clock, and I look over to where Donna sleeps the sleep of the innocent. She looks so happy with her dreams that I slide carefully out of bed so as not to disturb her. I take my shower, try for a smooth shave, leave the mustache alone, not wishing to press my luck, and grab a quick cup of tea before leaving by the side door. It’s Tuesday, Donna’s day off from the bookstore, and she’ll be asleep until at least nine.

I try to lift the garage door without making too much noise, but it’s impossible. This neighborhood is deathly quiet at this time of morning, and sounds carry. If it wakes her, there’s nothing I can do about it. I glance at her car in the drive, blocking mine, and not wishing to return to the house for her keys, I decide to ride my bicycle to the precinct house. As I wheel it out to the drive, I pull down the door one-handed, cringing at the way it slams to the ground.

I wipe off the bike’s seat even though it’s not dusty. I’m not really that persnickety, but it will save me from worrying all day that I have dirt on the seat of my trousers. There are so many other things I can fret over.

I listen to the rhythmic clicking of the gears as I wheel away from the house, enjoying the sleeping town and remembering where the potholes are. Even traffic is being kind to me this morning, and I arrive at the station house without incident. As I move the bike to the rack outside the building, I discover I don’t have my bike chain. It’s not really a chain; it’s a thin cable, wrapped in a polyurethane casing. Nowhere to be found. I still have the padlock, oddly enough. It’s secured on the bar which holds my seat.

Frowning, I pick up the bike and carry it up the steps and into the lobby. Too late, I spot Sergeant Tracy Broderick at the front desk, and I hunch my shoulders as I move past her to the back of the room. I lean the bike on its kickstand, then shoot a glare at the uniformed constables nearby, showing them without words who I’ll come looking for if my bike isn’t there at the end of the day.

I return to the front desk to sign in. Ignoring the brazen grin Tracy’s giving me, my gaze is pulled to the front doors. Without thinking about it, I pick up the umbrella stand from the right side of the doors to put it properly on the left side. I can hear Tracy giggling, but choose to believe it has nothing to do with me. As I sign in, her words fall on me like pebbles.

“Welcome back, Mr. Billings,” she says. “I was going to send round a gorilla-gram to speed your recovery.”

I hide my shudder, smile slightly, and escape toward the stairs. It was a mistake; now she raises the volume and the entire ground floor can hear. “Are you alright, then? Anything I can do?” I hunch my shoulders and speed my steps, taking refuge in the darker hallway of the first floor.

I unlock my office door and push it open, but don’t enter. Glancing down the hallway, I can see light from Jason’s office spilling out. I take a fortifying breath and head over there. I can hear his voice, but not the words. It’s imperative I check in with him, now that I’m back, but I don’t want the meeting to be witnessed by anyone else.

As I near his office, I realize he’s on the phone, and I breathe more easily. I enter, smiling a greeting and taking the seat before his desk. He signals that he’s trying to end the conversation, and so I fiddle with the creases of my trousers and the tassels on my shoes as I wait.

He hangs up the receiver at the same time he greets me. “David! Good to have you back. Are you sure it’s not too soon?”

“I’m fine, Jason. What will really drive me insane is staring at the same four walls all day. What do we have going on?”

“Tracy’s been missing you, you know.”

“Now that I’m back, she’ll be so busy picking on me, she’ll leave you lot alone. It’s worthy of a raise, I would think.”

“She only picks on you because she has the hots for you.”

“She doesn’t flirt with me, Jason, she ridicules me.”

“You know the only reason she keeps moving that umbrella stand is because she knows you’ll move it back. It gives her a free ogle at your arse.”

“So you’re going to pick on me as well, are you? What have we got going on?”

“We haven’t closed the files on the alleged suicide at the train station, and we’ve just got a new missing persons report I think might fit in with the John Doe we found in the market place last month.”

“As you already no doubt have crews assigned, where do I fit in?”

“I think you’ll find a bit of paperwork on your desk that needs catching up on. I did what I could, but you know I spend most my time in the field. Rightly so.”

“Mindless paperwork. A good way to ease back in, I would say.”

“Good attitude. Colbain needs your advice on his case. No one seems perturbed by Nancy Smythe being missing except for her pimp, and Colbain’s getting nowhere with his interviewing of witnesses. He needs another angle.”

“Alright, I think I can add my two bits, though I don’t promise anything.”

“You’re too modest, David,” he chides. “You have a sixth sense about these things I’ve always valued.”

I grin my thanks, but as Jason is not normally effusive in his praises, I wait for the bomb to drop.

“We are still working on the Barrington case, incidentally. But I don’t want you working that one.”

My grin fades. “That’s the only one I had problems with, Jason. I won’t fight you on it, but how will you explain to the others why I’m not involved? Do they know why you put me on leave?”

“Of course not. That’s one of the perks of my position. I explain nothing. And they all seem to think you’ve been hit with a nasty bug. That’s more or less what I put in the report, as well. Your... confusion...need not be any sort of mark on your record.”

I hear the implied warning there. If I play along, not making waves, I’d never have to face the department’s psychologist. Such a thing would inhibit normal promotion, as well as affect any sought after transfers. But since when is Jason so trusting? It is his ultimate responsibility if anyone on his staff were proven to be unstable and unable to function in his job.

“I understand perfectly, Jason. I would like to make a request, however...”

“Yes?”

“I would like to be kept informed of the progress. Think of it as therapy for me. I will have to face that demon sooner or later. I can’t just pretend I’m not affected.”

“I still can’t understand why you are, David. You didn’t know her in life, did you?”

“Never met her.”

“She looks remarkably like Erica.”

My breath catches in my throat. What does he know of Erica? She was before his time, from before I transferred into CID. I force myself to relax, to feign nonchalance. “I suppose any woman with shoulder-length blonde hair and an elfin face might be said to resemble Erica.”

“Height: five foot three, weight: eight stone... I agree, the description would fit many women in this area alone, but we saw her with our own eyes, David. The resemblance was uncanny.”

“I wasn’t aware you knew Erica.”

“You had her picture on your desk even after Donna moved in with you. I’ll bet it’s there now.”

It isn’t. I had stashed Erica’s picture in the bottom drawer of my desk months ago. “Let’s say that _is_ why Daphne Barrington’s murder affected me so strongly. Is there anything abnormal about that?”

“Of course not, David, as long as you realize it for what it is. But your judgment was in question. You seemed to be confusing one case with another, and I still don’t know what you were working on that caused you to be so sure you’d bagged a garrotte at the scene of the crime. She was the only strangulation we had at the time.”

“I don’t have answers for that, Jason. But I do feel right about coming back to work. If you’re questioning my ability to focus on the tasks at hand, it’s your right to limit my exposure to them.”

“Why don’t we just play it by ear for the time being, David. It will be perfectly normal for you to be on light duty for a bit. You’ve just recovered from a helluva virus, right?” He smiles then, as if trying to lighten the mood.

I can play along. At least I’m not in the cell I’d created in my flat, with the rock-hard sofa and the condescending pigeons. I take the file folders Jason hands me and head back to my office. A cell of another kind.

 

After four hours of working on brain-numbing, pointless paperwork that any sensible chimpanzee could accomplish, my stiff joints demand a break, so I take the stack of finished work to the outer office for a constable to file. Tea by now is a necessity, so I head over to the canteen to replenish my plasma.

Jason is holding court there, bringing his crew up-to-date on whatever they’re all working on. He waves me over when I would have headed to another table, and the others begin to dispose of their coffee cups and head back to their various duties. I add sugar to my tea and wait.

“Our beloved ACC has requested an audience of us, David,” he says, tongue in cheek. “I fear he may be worried we’re keeping secrets from him. He’s particularly upset that we haven’t yet solved the crimes that will be happening next week.”

I laugh in spite of myself. It’s with no false modesty that I realize I’m the ACC’s golden boy, being groomed to head the squad eventually, but Jason never seemed to hold it against me. Though I never make disparaging remarks about our ACC, who spent most of his career so far in the office as opposed to actually doing police work, I’ve always enjoyed Jason’s irreverent attitude toward politicians in general, and our ACC in particular. That Jason trusts me not to carry those remarks back to the ACC says a lot about his faith in me. It seems to warm the air between us to know that this, at least, has not changed.

I tell Jason about my interview with Colbain--who is even now tracking down witnesses he hadn’t considered before--and warn him about the files I hadn’t finished yet. He updates me regarding the John Doe case, who has since been positively identified, and then he grows quiet. I understand this to mean the only case left is the Barrington case.

“So,” I say, forcing it into the open. “No progress yet on Daphne Barrington?”

“We’re still waiting on Dr. Sullivan’s lab findings.”

Dr. Sullivan is our Morbid Pathologist, and his scalpels and microscopes will tell us what our eyes couldn’t. But since he never does today what he can put off until tomorrow, the Barrington case could stagnate in our unsolved files for an indeterminable time. This is probably why the ACC requested our council.

As neither Jason nor I tend to shy away from the inevitable, we begin to head back upstairs to see the ACC. We’re almost run over by Sergeant Marlowe, an ox of a man whose uniform never seems to hang properly on him. “We’ve just had the call, sir,” he says to Jason. “A floater washed up just outside town centre. Constable Porter is there now, awaiting your orders and keeping the onlookers at bay.”

“Damn and blast,” Jason says jovially. “Please relay our apologies to the venerable ACC, will you, Marlowe? We’ll have to miss our appointment with him.” Turning to me, he adds, “David, what say we tackle these heathens together, eh?”

It’s with a light heart that I follow Jason out the side door.

 

She must once have been beautiful. Before someone tossed her into the river, before her young life had been so cruelly ended. Even without a closer examination, it’s clear she’d been a victim of violent assault. She’d been alive long enough for a purple bruise to form on her vulnerable-looking throat, and though it would need confirmation from Dr. Sullivan, she had been in the river for more than just a few hours.

She’s missing a shoe; the one she’s still wearing suggests she had been assaulted while out for the evening. It’s a strappy black sandal with a two-inch heel, and her tights are laddered, with one leg sagging down near her ankle. Jason whispers, “Excuse me,” to her dead body just before lifting her dress to check to see if her panties are in place. “No apparent signs of a sexual attack,” he confirms, then smooths down her dress again and gives a threatening look toward the small crowd outside the crime scene tapes. I know he enjoys doing that. He never abuses his power, but he knows how intimidating his glare can be. The seven or eight people gathered there actually back up several steps, not wishing him to decide they might be witnesses worth interrogating.

I gaze out over the river. She could have been thrown from the bridge, but with the current flowing the way it is, she would more likely have been carried along the other way. Looking south, I try to remember all the little towns along the way, try to calculate how far she would have travelled.

“Perhaps Hitchin,” I suggest to Jason.

“I suppose it’s possible,” he agrees. Sergeants Moore and Goody are already scouring the area, looking for a pocketbook, or anything else that might lead to identification, but the chances are slim that such evidence would so fortuitously be with the body.

“David.”

The gravity in his one word stops me short. “Jason?”

“Have you taken a good look at her?”

I look more closely at her face, still pretty if one ignores the bloating and the dark mark on her throat. I can see what he’s getting at. “Her face is rounder, Jason, and her hair is darker. She seems taller.”

“She still bears a startling resemblance, though, doesn’t she?”

“Are you suggesting a serial killer, Jason? Someone who takes offense at petite, blonde-haired, green-eyed, elfin-featured young women?”

“If we need to start profiling this bastard, if this is the same attacker as in the Barrington case, I don’t want to be caught off-guard. And I don’t want to wait until the ACC suggests it.”

“I think you’re looking for trouble where it may not exist, but I’ll go along with profiling. Even if we keep that part of the investigation to ourselves for a bit.”

“Yes, I believe we do need to be circumspect. Nothing makes the ACC piss himself more quickly than the scent of a serial killer in our midst. The first thing he’ll do is make a statement to the press that we’re very near to solving it, thereby effectively forcing us to shoulder the responsibility.”

“As we will in any event, Jason.”

“True, David... too true.”


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

I awaken to the dim pre-dawn shadows working their way across the ceiling. Next to me, Donna sleeps prone, her face turned aside on her pillow. I struggle to remember what I was dreaming just before waking, but it’s already dissolving, fading away as if it never was. That doesn’t keep me from shivering at the would-be memory of it, and I nestle closer to Donna for comfort.

She’s having none of it; she rolls over, taking all the blankets with her. If I move closer still, pursuing her, she’ll likely fall right out of bed.

I’m tempted to do it anyway, if only to get back the blankets.

She sleeps the sleep of the weary; we’d made love last night before sleeping, and it had been intense, soul-cleansing, flammable lust. I had been rough with her, though she didn’t seem to mind. It had shaken me to the core; we enjoy a more or less conservative sex life, and our romping of last night had overtones of violence.

I know why I behaved that way.

I was punishing her. She had finally condescended to making love with me, and I knew she was rewarding me for going back to work. I had removed myself from the house and she was patting me on the head, showing me what a good lapdog I was. And so I rebelled. Who is she to reward me? My returning to work has nothing to do with her. Whether she’s here in my life or not, I would be going back to work.

But I stew silently. If she didn’t recognize my frantic gropings of last night for what they were, it’s because she chose not to. Donna is a great one for living in denial. Don’t rock the boat, it will upset her.

Because she looks so comfortable, and therefore comforting, I slip my hand under the blankets to caress her warm flesh. She murmurs, still asleep, but just because she fucked my brains out last night doesn’t mean she’s still wildly passionate for my body. As predicted, she rolls over, and I grasp the blankets tightly. When she thumps to the floor, I feign sleep, rolling back to my side of the bed, my prize of blankets wrapped securely around me. I struggle not to laugh as she makes confused noises before climbing back into bed and moving close to me. I take pity on her and relax, loosening my hold on the blankets so we can share them. My plan is to remember nothing of this come breakfast time.

 

Jason seems preoccupied, and as I’m not sure if it’s because he’s concentrating on avoiding our ACC or if something about our floater is upsetting him, I leave him be. I’m working with him on the new case, and if there’s anything to know, he’ll put me in the picture.

“David,” he says to me after our morning briefing, “how are things between you and Donna?”

This surprises me. I had thought we understood we would not speak of Donna. “We’re fine, Jason, thank you. Any particular reason for asking?”

“She seems worried about you, that’s all.”

“She never mentioned worrying to me. Why would she come to you?” Since when have Donna and Jason been soul-mates? And when had she contacted him? “What, specifically, seems to be troubling her?” I may as well hear it all.

“She wonders if you’ve been a bit premature in returning to work. She doesn’t feel anything has really been resolved. She feels you’re keeping secrets from her.”

“Nothing has been resolved because she won’t talk to me about it,” I reply waspishly. “I was acceding to her wishes by avoiding the subject entirely. And now she’s claiming I’m shutting her out?”

I am painfully aware my voice rises in pitch and volume with each word, but feel powerless to stop it. She closes herself off whenever I broach the subject of my fears, and now she’s blaming me for not talking to her? The bloody nerve! And what does she expect Jason to do, after all?

“David, she’s only worried. Don’t hold it against her. She cares deeply for you.”

“Forgive me, Jason, but you’re in no position to know. And how is it you’ve become her shoulder to cry on?”

“She knew I was the one who’d insisted on your taking leave. Who else should she turn to?”

“To me,” I spit out. “Why won’t she simply talk to me?”

 

I become aware of my surroundings with a start. It takes me a few minutes, but finally I can place myself in the hallway on the ground floor of the precinct house. A few more frightening moments of trying to remember why I’m here, then I have it. I was on my way out the door for lunch...then nothing.

I strain my memory to figure out what I’d been doing just before lunch. I was sitting in Jason’s office, comparing notes on the Eddelson case, formerly known as the John Doe case in Bedford’s marketplace, and...

The phone ringing...Jason grunting his agreement...then telling me Hitchin was claiming our floater. She’d been tentatively identified as being one of their residents, and they were working on a more positive ID.

So, why am I here? Is there even a connection? Had I been en route to the hospital’s morgue to view the body once more, looking for something we may have missed at the scene? The only other reason for being down this hallway suggests I might have been on my way to the evidence room, but we hadn’t gathered much at the scene. If she had, in fact, been attacked in Hitchin, that’s where any clues would be found, not here.

So, there must be something else that had brought me here. I look around, making sure no one witnesses my confusion, then I shrug it off and head out the front door. Sergeant Philips is manning the desk. Perhaps that’s why I was hanging around the hallway; I had been waiting for Tracy to leave for her lunch break, so I wouldn’t have to pass her on my way out. I must remember this optimal time for making my escape. My lunch sits better on my stomach if I don’t have to pass Tracy’s gauntlet of sexual innuendo and suggestive remarks first. I look for my watch to check the time, seeing only my bare wrist. Checking the clock on the wall, I make a mental note to adjust my own schedule accordingly. Tracy frightens me.

 

I’m already tired of paperwork. Though Jason has shown a willingness to bring me back into the fold of our more productive investigators, we’re more or less held up on the floater case. Until Hitchin makes a positive ID, there isn’t much to be done. I had thought to follow up on other cases, but the only ones still open and unsolved involve questioning the first officers on the various scenes. That would put me in the front office with Tracy hovering at the desk, so I look around my office for inspiration, something else I can be doing.

I want to do nothing to encourage Tracy; even eye-contact could be fatal.

I suspect she’s resorting to extreme tactics to force me to pay attention to her. When I went to retrieve my bike yesterday, I had noticed the dried residue on the tires. She must have taken it out for a spin, or she at least would have seen if anyone else had. She would have done it on purpose, knowing that as a trained detective, I would most certainly notice evidence of it having been ridden, and through newly-laid concrete, or at least a sandy puddle or two. But I made no mention of it; if she’s trying to force my hand, compel me to speak to her, she’ll have to work a lot harder than that. I don’t even know how to deal with Donna; the last thing I need is another female making my life a series of pitfalls and quicksand. And when Tracy smiles, I can only picture sharks, circling the poor, unsuspecting man in the middle of the soon-to-be feeding frenzy.

I venture out to Jason’s office, and see he’d signed out to track down something or other. As he’s busy doing things I used to do, there’s nothing more for me. It’s either become the pencil-pushing file clerk he’d like me to be, or go home and pretend things are alright between Donna and me.

The choice is clear. I didn’t join the police force to fill out forms all day. I head home, wondering if I can force Donna to talk to me.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Christine Martin. It hadn’t taken long for her to be identified. She’d been reported missing only that morning, and normally, an adult must be missing for at least forty-eight hours before police would take a complaint seriously. But she had lived and dated in Hitchin, and our comrades-in-arms there had a new desk sergeant working, who could not bring himself to turn away the distraught young woman who begged them to search for her sister. Young Pamela Martin had gone to the station, equipped with a recent photo of her adored sister, Christine, and so when Jason sent out a BOLO--a Be On the Look-Out--the Hitchin desk sergeant recognized the description at once, even down to the dress our floater was wearing.

I look more closely at the copy of the photo in my hand. She isn’t all that similar to Daphne Barrington, and even less so to my erstwhile lover, Erica. Her hair is darker, for one thing. Thicker, longer. And her chin isn’t quite as pointed as Miss Barrington’s. Not entirely dissimilar, but not enough to get Jason’s knickers into a twist. I don’t see what all the fuss is about.

But Jason had gone out to Hitchin himself, questioning Pamela Martin with our Hitchin brethren present. He’d come back with the young Martin lass and her parents, who had tearfully identified their late daughter. No, she hadn’t been doing anything she wasn’t supposed to be doing. She had merely gone out to dinner with her current boyfriend, they’d had a spat, and Christine had started walking home in a huff. The repentant boyfriend had thought to let her cool her heels, but was now praying to God to turn back the clock, so he could deliver her safely home. Her abductor must have grabbed her somewhere between the restaurant and her home, a mere four blocks away.

All things considered, there need be no polite fight for jurisdiction. Jason signed the order for the body to be removed from our care and delivered into Hitchin’s. As for myself, I really don’t care who will have final authority over the case. I had put forth the theory that Miss Martin had been killed by a quick blow to the throat, but Jason negatived that because it was his contention that she would have been killed too quickly for a bruise to form.

When Dr. Sullivan came back with his autopsy report, which stated fracture of the hyoid bone, it seemed to support my guess, but Jason would have none of it. The bone in question was fragile, and may or may not have been broken because of a fatal blow. My argument was that with a victim as young as Miss Martin, there is a flexibility to the hyoid bone that would allow it to remain unbroken, even in strangulation. This seemed to prove that what killed her must have been a violent blow. He seemed to be baiting me, trying to force me to defend my arguments, but I just can’t be moved to care about this one. I’d rather put my energies into closing out the cases I already have. And Hitchin’s CID unit will invariably come up with their own theories in any event.

Eddie McMillan has just left my office. He’d found nothing at the riverside which connects that innocent patch of ground to Christine Martin’s murderer, nor anything that suggested she’d been killed there. We are now happy with the supposition that she’d been carried in by the tide, and because of the current’s direction, we’re agreeing with the theory she’d been killed in Hitchin, probably right where she’d been taken. Hitchin’s crews are even now scouring those four blocks, looking for anything Mother Nature hadn’t dropped there.

I stand, stretching out the kinks, and move to the window to open it. Eddie’s only vice is cigarettes, and I feel an urgent need to clear my office of the blue smoke that hangs in the air. My eye is caught by the figure down in the street, moving away from the precinct house and crossing the street. It looks like Donna, but I can’t be sure. She’s moving too quickly for me to recognize the walk.

But what would she have been doing here? If she had need to see me, she knows where my office is. Then I remember she’d gone to Jason about my leave, surprising me.

I leave the office, searching for Jason. When I find him in the lab, he hurriedly finishes his instructions to the lab tech and leads me away, back toward the canteen. Feeling like I’d just been given the bum’s rush, I surmise he was working on evidence in the Barrington case. Better not to ask, then.

“I just saw someone I thought might be Donna, leaving the station,” I say instead. “Has she come to see you for some reason?”

“Donna? No. Why would she?” He seems to be telling me the truth, but I have an urgent need to call home anyway. “David, is everything all right between you two?”

“Compared to what?” I ask. Things could always be better or worse between any two people, and if he would stop to think about it, he wouldn’t have asked. We make small talk for a few minutes, then I return to my office to call Donna.

Either she’s not at home, or she saw my number on Caller ID and hasn’t prepared her cover story yet.

I push up my cuff to check the time, but I don’t have my watch. Rubbing my wrist, I look up to the clock on the wall and see I’m on overtime. With nothing more to be done today, I go out to my car and head for home.

 

It takes me forever to calm down. My eyes stare, unseeing, at the dark ceiling above me. My breath is still coming in quick puffs, and my heart is racing. The nightmare was so much more intense than anything I’d dreamed before.

In it, I was sitting at the kitchen table, my back to the sink and the phone on the wall there. I could hear a woman’s voice, could hear only half of the conversation. I knew it wasn’t Donna speaking; the sound of it, though familiar, was far different from her sultry voice. The woman was giggling into the phone, and I could feel the heat in my face, could feel my blood pressure rising.

Suddenly, I lunged for her, wrapping the phone cord around her neck, cutting off her protests and preventing her from screaming. As her choking noises subsided, I listened to the man on the other end of the phone asking if everything was alright. Did I want to schedule installment of the satellite dish?

I looked down at the woman, who was lying lifeless on the floor. Her features were hazy, but as my vision began to clear, I recognized the face. I hung up the phone slowly, and calmly returned to the table, where my waffles and coffee still waited.

I tried to swallow my breakfast, and it was my near choking that finally woke me up. As I rehash the dream over and over again, my pulse begins to slow, my breathing getting more regulated. I shake away the last of the terror and turn my head toward Donna. She’s not troubled at all about my disturbed sleep, and I move closer, until I can feel her even breaths against my face. I want to reach out to her, to steal what comfort I can from her warm body, but I’m still trembling slightly. If I were to wake her up, she might want to know why I’m awake.

Since I have no answer I want to share with her, I don’t risk it.

I roll over, pulling the blankets over my shoulder and staring wide-eyed out the window, waiting for dawn to break. It’s the first time I can remember dreaming about Erica.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

I take a deep breath and smooth the features of my face into impassivity. Hoping my annoyance isn’t showing up in my eyes, I calmly wait for Miss Virginia Durfee to finish her monologue. Her story uses the same catch-phrases today’s commoners have popularized, and I’m already tired of hearing her complain about all the ‘issues’ in her life, sick of her grievances about all the ‘drama’ she’s forced to face in her innocent endeavors to live her life quietly.

“I wouldn’t file a complaint, normally,” she continues, droning. “It’s just that he should be made to support me. I don’t really want him to come back here, though.” I keep from rolling my eyes, only just, and catch Colbain’s near-smirk as he looks away, out the window. He’s enjoying my predicament, and suddenly I get tired of paying lip service to this woman who has no real idea of what constitutes ‘issues’.

I allow her to see my eyes take in the signs of male occupancy in her allegedly lonely home: the cast-off, greasy-soled work shoes in the corner, the leather jacket over the back of the dining room chair, the _Playboy_ magazine on the coffee table.

“I do have a lodger,” she tries. “I had to have some way to earn a few bob when the bills come due.”

Knowing a landlady wouldn’t allow a ‘lodger’ to take over her own sitting room, I lift my eyebrow to show her my doubts. Still, I’m not here to judge. “Exactly how long has he been missing, Miss Durfee?”

“It’s going on three years now. How long before I can declare him legally dead?”

Colbain turns until his back is fully toward us, but I can see his shoulders shaking. “It depends on certain factors, Miss Durfee,” I respond. “Just because you haven’t seen nor heard from him in all that time doesn’t necessarily mean he’s disappeared. I presume you’ve checked with his employer?”

“He was self-employed,” she says, a disgusting whine beginning to seep into her voice. “He was a landscaper.”

Noticing she’s speaking of him in the past tense, and wondering if it’s wishful thinking on her part, I translate ‘landscaper’ to mean ‘gardener’, and wonder again why Jason thought this complaint needed following up on. Perhaps Miss Durfee’s ‘lodger’ is failing to pay his rent. I need desperately to make my escape. “I’ll do some checking, Miss Durfee, and try to track him down. You’re right; if the two of you are still legally married, he should be made to pay something in the way of support, and should you decide to divorce him on the grounds of abandonment, you’ll need to have him served with the papers.”

“As long as he doesn’t come back here,” she says decisively. Does she really think I have the power to keep her husband away from his legal residence? “What if you do find him?” she asks.

“Isn’t that why you called us? We’ll let you know what we find.” I hand her my card, hating to think she’ll actually use the number on it for updates on the search, but at least it gets me out of her house. I glare at Colbain, who has yet to completely remove the look of amusement on his face, and sit myself in his car. I hate riding with him; he has the manners of an American while in traffic, and I tend to sit much lower in the seat than my spine appreciates, so as to hide from other motorists, lest they think I’m encouraging Colbain’s methods.

Upon arrival at the precinct building, I climb out of Colbain’s car, test my legs, and eye the side door reflectively. It’s worth a try, and I wave Colbain off. He has other fish to fry, cases that don’t involve me. The side door locks from within, and I can either wait here until someone leaves by this entrance, or I can gird up my loins and enter through the front door like any other respectable police officer. After a full five minutes, I berate myself for my cowardice and turn to approach the front door.

Before Tracy realizes I’m here, I quickly move the umbrella stand to its proper position on the other side of the doors, making sure I’m facing the front desk. The sudden movement must have caught her eye, and she raises her voice to make sure everyone in the building can hear. “Mr. Billings! I have a message for you. It came in about five minutes after you’d left.”

I’m standing a mere two meters before her. She could have whispered it and I’d have heard. I glance quickly at the few constables at the desks to the left. I recognize a look of commiseration on a few faces--Tracy’s previous victims. It helps to know there are others who understand.

I take the message slip from her nail-lacquered fingers, and ignore the question in her eyes. It’s none of her business who might be calling me, and I have no intention of sticking around long enough for her to ask. After glancing at the message, I see from the phone number it’s from Mary Evans, one of the lab techs. Only her first name is on the slip, so I have to assume no last name, nor a title, was given. Tracy wouldn’t necessarily know who Mary is, and I make a mental note to apologize to Mary for the grilling Tracy was sure to have given.

“She wouldn’t leave a message,” Tracy is saying. “I find that rather odd, don’t you?”

“She must have realized I already know why she’s calling,” I reply.

“She’ll be devastated when you have to cancel dinner plans with her.”

Really, Tracy knows not the meaning of subtlety. I refuse to answer her obvious fishing expedition, and walk away, bracing my nerves for any parting shots from her. “Or maybe she called to _make_ dinner plans?”

I’ll fix Tracy up with Colbain. That’s what I’ll do...

 

“Yes, David, thanks for returning my call. The tire tracks are spot on, that bike was most definitely at the scene.”

Tire tracks? Which scene?

“I’m sorry, Mary, I’m a bit at a loss. To which case are you referring? I wasn’t aware of tire tracks found anywhere lately.”

“I’m talking about the Barrington case, David. Isn’t that one of yours?”

“More or less. I’m afraid I didn’t know there was such evidence found.”

“Oh, wait, here it is. The request came in from Jason. Make sure he knows, will you? I’m on my way out and I don’t want him breathing down my back for work that’s already been done.”

“No problem, Mary. I will relay the message.”

As I hang up the phone, my hand trembling for no apparent reason, I look out toward the hallway, as if I expect Jason to be eavesdropping. The hallway is empty, though I can hear sounds filtering in from the open squad room. I’m not supposed to be working on the Barrington case, but surely Jason can’t hold it against me that I’ve been given information about it. It was an innocent assumption on Mary’s part. In the past, what she told Jason, she was, in effect, telling me, and vice versa.

And so, I should be already on my feet to find Jason, to give him this news. So why aren’t my legs moving? Why this unfounded reluctance to get involved?

Before I can worry about my rapidly diminishing sanity--I can almost tell now when the fugue is coming on--Jason’s footsteps echo in the hallway, approaching my office. He appears in my doorway, the pleasant look on his face giving way to concern at whatever he sees on my face. “David? Is everything alright?”

“Yes, Jason,” I say, clearing my throat against the blockage. “Mary Evans just called. She thought I had ordered a test for tire tracks, and so she gave me the results of it. Apparently, there was a bike at the scene of the Barrington murder, and it’s positive. This is news to me; I hadn’t been aware of a bike.”

I can’t interpret the expression on Jason’s face, but clearly this isn’t news he wants to hear. “I see. Thank you. I’m just on my way out to Hitchin; they have questions about the Martin case. What time will you be leaving today? I shouldn’t be any more than about two hours there.”

I push my cuff up, but remember I haven’t found my watch yet. After checking the clock on the wall, I reply, “Probably no more than another hour. I can stay later, if you’d like me to.”

“Where’s your watch, David?”

“I don’t know; I seem to have lost it. It’s probably at home, right on my night table, where I normally leave it. Why?”

He does something unusual then. He quickly reaches to grab the chair I keep right next to the door and sits heavily down on it. His face has gone a sickly shade of grey, and he leans forward, bracing his elbows on his knees and resting his head in his hands.

“Jason? Are you ill?” I scramble to see what the matter is, but he waves me away.

“Just give me a moment, will you? Probably something I ate.”

I’m not used to seeing Jason like this; it’s unprecedented. He is such a rock, I can’t even imagine him being ill or struck down by anything. I strive to say something, anything that will get my mind off this unexpected and unwelcome frailty. “What questions does Hitchin have about the Martin case?”

He slowly lifts his face, his eyes meeting mine. “They think they know the spot where Miss Martin had been attacked, and they’ve found a couple of things...broken shrubbery, trodden grass...debris that could have been dropped... I have to go and describe how we found her washed up on shore. They’re just trying to cross the t’s and dot the i’s.”

I nod, happy to see color returning to his face. “More power to them, then,” I say. “I hope whatever they’ve found leads to her murderer.”

“Do you?”

Without another word to explain that cryptic, rhetorical question, he leaves my office, looking as though the weight of the world is on his shoulders. I do believe he’s more affected by the Barrington case than I had ever been, and he seems to be taking a personal interest in the Martin case as well.

Perhaps he’s the one who should take a bit of leave.

I look at my desk, see nothing there that won’t keep until morning, and lock up. I can hear Jason’s voice coming from his office. “Can you just look and see if it’s there, Donna?”

Donna? Why should he be calling her? What is he looking for?

I can no longer trust Jason. He’s after my Donna, and she’s only too willing, it seems to me. It’s time I took myself home and this time, Donna will not escape me. She will sit there while I bare my soul to her, and if she wants nothing to do with me after I explain my insanity to her, then so be it. At least I will have tried.

After that, the devil can take her. Or Jason.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

My vision slowly returns to me, and I can now make out the darkening shadows of my room.

Glancing out the window, I can see the pigeons with their heads pulled down into their necks, those who haven’t tucked them under their wings. All except for the one who keeps looking in at me, watching and waiting for me to leave. He doesn’t like me to be in this room, but I can’t think why. It’s not as though he can come in if I leave.

I’m aware of a presence just outside in the hall. A second later, I can hear footsteps, and they don’t belong to Donna. I watch, amazed and affronted, as the door creaks open, inch by inch. Light from the hallway spills into the room, and though I can’t clearly see his facial features, the outline of his bulk tells me Jason has come to call.

He pushes the door away, letting it bump against the opposite wall, and leans casually against the doorjamb. “David.”

I nod to acknowledge his greeting, but say nothing. He looks around, then reaches for the light switch next to him. Too late, I close my eyes against the invasion of harsh light on my sleeping retinas. I sit calmly, opening my eyes slowly, until they’ve adjusted to this ill treatment. I look down at myself, seeing what Jason would see. Except for a few dust smears on my trousers from the filthy floor, my clothing is no different than it had been earlier in the day. I look up to meet his eyes, waiting for him to tell me why he’s here, in this very private room, without an invitation, without good cause. He could have sent someone else, after all.

Jason is still looking around the room, but leisurely. He’s taking it all in, but obviously isn’t searching for anything. “This is where you spend the time you should be spending with Donna, then?”

“Donna and I have very little to say to each other these days, Jason. I have more interesting conversations with that pigeon out there.” I nod toward the window, and Jason lets out an almost silent chuckle.

“I’ve just returned from Hitchin,” he says. “I believe we’ve found your watch.”

I can no longer depend on the fugue to snatch me up and away from this cruel world. Sometime during this evening, my fugue had cleared up until it was no longer separated from my conscious mind. I remember everything now.

“I can remember where I lost it now,” I admit to my friend, my superior, my mentor, my captor. “The poor thing had put up quite a fight. It broke my heart, you know. I so wanted to spare her.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I had no control, Jason. I was powerless to stop it. I didn’t know why, so I didn’t know how.”

It must make sense to him, for he nods and looks away. Freed from the prison of his eyes, I could continue. “She winked at me once, you know.”

“Who did?” Jason frowns, trying valiantly to follow my words.

“Christine Martin, of course. Donna and I had gone to dinner there in Hitchin, and Miss Martin was there as well, with a few of her friends, I suppose. Young, attractive, fun-loving people, flirting outrageously with people they didn’t know and would never actually meet.”

“That’s why you attacked her?”

“No. I can only guess I went after her because it was Erica all over again. They know the power they have over men, you know. They know we’re fools because of their attentions, and so they set out to make such fools of as many men as they can. It’s a power trip for them. Christine Martin was bold enough to flirt with me with Donna right by my side. Had I gone over there to take her up on what her wink suggested, she probably would have pissed herself.”

“So you waited until you could catch her alone, with no witnesses about.”

“I knew where she’d be. You mentioned yourself the sixth sense I had about certain things. This was just one example of that. I knew she’d be walking home from the restaurant that night, I knew just when to go out there.”

“What did you tell Donna about where you were going?”

“I told her nothing. I thought I could go to Hitchin and be back before Donna even knew I was gone.”

“What about Daphne Barrington?”

“She was nothing more than providence, Jason. I had gone off to ride my bike, just to get some fresh air and cool off. Donna and I had had words, and it was upsetting to me. She told me how annoying I was becoming. I had at first thought it was my imagination, but her words were right there inside my head again. Then I realized they were coming from someone else, that I was overhearing an argument between Daphne Barrington and her escort. She flounced off, and I began to follow her stealthily, I suppose thinking she was Donna.”

“And you strangled her? With the garrotte you thought was missing from our evidence vault?”

“Exactly. The reason I kept insisting on the garrotte being found at the scene was because I actually had bagged it. Well, not really bagged it. I picked it up and stuffed it into my pocket. But that’s the part I couldn’t remember properly. I thought I had picked it up while we were investigating the call.”

“Where is it now, David?”

I don’t answer, but he follows my eyes to the milk crate. Keeping one eye on me, he moves to the crate and begins digging through it. I don’t mind; I can see no reason he shouldn’t see what’s in there. He pulls out my bike chain with his fingertips, then takes an old newspaper from the crate and wraps it around the chain, slipping it into his jacket’s pocket. I breathe a sigh of relief. There is no more reason to fear the milk crate.

“What really happened to Erica, David?”

I see no reason not to tell him, now that I remember. “She was coming on to the salesman who’d called us, trying to talk us into having a satellite dish installed. She loved flirting with phone solicitors, and I must have had my fill of it. I strangled her with the phone cord.”

“And then?” He doesn’t seem very surprised by my revelation.

I keep quiet, but as I look out the window, Jason must be drawing his own conclusions. He’s a very intelligent detective, and I suspect they’ll be digging up my back garden soon.

“So, you killed Erica because she was flirting with the cable guy. You killed Daphne Barrington because she was repeating what Donna had just finished bitching at you about. You killed Christine Martin because she flirted with you, just like Erica flirted with other men... It occurs to me that Tracy Broderick must be on your list. How is it you haven’t killed her? She flirts with you constantly.”

“I don’t know, Jason, I really don’t. I think it might be because she’s such a predator. The others looked and acted so innocent, even while flirting... At least Tracy is upfront about it.

“There’s a bit more to it than that, anyway, Jason,” I say defensively when he says nothing. “You said yourself how much each woman resembled the other. They actually _became_ Erica, over and over again. I was already in too deep, I had to keep killing her!”

Jason murmurs calming sounds, and I force myself to ease up. It’s no good getting worked up about all of this now, it’s been done. I can’t take any of it back.

“I did notice that each of your victims looked less and less like Erica, and more and more like Donna.”

I digest his words, knowing he wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true. It wasn’t something I had thought of before, but he’s right. I just hadn’t seen it. Each time I killed another woman, her hair had been darker than her predecessor, her features less delicate, her body less waif-like. My criminal self had been evolving all this time. So where would I go from here?

Meanwhile, Jason has begun going through the end table. I’m curious now, because though I can remember things I’ve forgotten until tonight, I still can’t remember what I’ve stashed in the table. I begin laughing as he pulls out a bottle of shampoo. Confused, or perhaps concerned, Jason throws a questioning look my way.

“I’ll bet it’s lavender-scented.”

Jason shrugs and opens the bottle, sniffing. “Yes, it is. Donna’s?”

“No, Jason. It was Erica’s.”

He asks no more questions about the shampoo, and as he pulls nothing else from the table, I can only assume there’s nothing else there that will tighten a noose around my neck. “David,” he says, then stops uncertainly.

“Go ahead, Jason. This is no time to be shy.”

“We can get you help. We have some of the best resources available. I can’t say you won’t pay for your crimes, but the stresses of the job, unresolved emotional issues... We can get you through this.”

“What would be the point, Jason?”

“I want to see you get better, David. I want to know that someday you can put it all behind you somehow. Do your time, get some help... It need not end your life. Donna wouldn’t want to see you give up.”

I push myself to my feet, laughing hysterically. Jason is braced, no doubt in the event I lunge for him, but that’s not my intention. I’m laughing almost to the point where I have no strength, but I must gather it now, because it’s a heavy couch.

“David, where’s Donna?”

I struggle, but succeed in lifting the small couch high enough to send it crashing through the window, upsetting the pigeons and causing a flurry of feathers to add to the confusion in the room. I feel Jason’s hands tugging at my arms, but I manage to shake him off.

“David!”

I push through the shards of glass still remaining in the window pane, then stand on the small blacktopped roof and look back at him. I point to my right, indicating the direction in which Jason should look. At first, he doesn’t seem to understand, and tries to follow me out to the roof. I shake my head furiously and point back into the room, then again to my right. Jason runs out of the room, down the hallway, and I can hear his anguished cry. I know he has found Donna’s body, sprawled out and livid on our bed, her features as I saw them last: tongue protruding, eyes bulging, froth spilling from her swollen lips, marks from my hands encircling her neck.

I hear the sound of Jason’s shoes pounding on the wooden floor of the hallway, and before he can get to this window, I turn and push myself off the roof, spread-eagled and aiming for the barbed garden fence below, making sure I hit it where it will do me the most good. If I have any luck at all, my heart will be pierced and it will be over quickly.


End file.
